Good Friday

It was Holy Thursday, and Udson Freitas was sitting on the balcony of his small house in the Complexo do Alemao favela when a girl ran onto his street below, screaming. "They killed my brother! They killed my brother!" Freitas ran down his steps, and was shocked to see that it was 14-year-old Ana Ferreira, who lived just up the hill from him. It couldn't be possible, he thought. Her brother, Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira, was 10. Hysterical, Ana said that Rio's military police had shot Eduardo in the head. It would have been far from the first time that Brazilian police, who are in a state of war with drug gangs here, had killed an unarmed resident since the...

Related "Good Friday" Articles

Few events in American history unleashed deeper and more profound mass mourning than the assassination of Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, on April 15, 1865.
In the North, Lincoln was the recently (and overwhelmingly) re-elected president, a revered...

The threat of bad weather, the start of a holiday weekend and the expectation of a bad team all probably led many people to stay away Friday night when the Phillies made their first appearance of the season at Citizens Bank Park in the On-Deck series...

Continuing customs begun by its first congregation 273 years ago, the Moravians in Bethlehem will observe Holy Week and Easter in a traditional and unique manner.
Harper's Weekly, in its March 31, 1888 issue, published a wood engraving of Easter...

Can you be tempted by the people who love you most? Shockingly yes, says Mark 8:31-38 according to Jesus. As we journey through Lent toward Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the pivot point of the entire gospel is right after Peter makes his profound...

For some reason or another, the belfry of Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem has never been home to a Moravian star.
The multi-pointed ornaments are found everywhere else in the Christmas City, but none has ever hung in the most prominent spot of the...

It was Holy Thursday, and Udson Freitas was sitting on the balcony of his small house in the Complexo do Alemao favela when a girl ran onto his street below, screaming.
"They killed my brother! They killed my brother!"
Freitas ran down his...

Pope Francis, presiding at the traditional Good Friday Colosseum procession, decried what he called the "complicit silence" about the killing of Christians.
The evening, torch-lit ceremony at the ancient arena recalls the suffering and death of...

The Islamic extremists who slaughtered 148 people at a college in northeast Kenya while shouting "God is great" appeared to have planned extensively, even targeting a site where Christians had gone to pray, survivors said Friday.
In the capital...

Kenyan authorities began the grim task Friday of identifying the dead from an attack by Shabab Muslim extremists that killed at least 147, mainly Christian students, at a university in Garissa near the border with Somalia.
Police imposed a dusk-to-dawn...

Anne McLaughlin has done the same thing on Good Friday for more than 30 years: She takes the day off and attends church, where she spends the afternoon reflecting on her faith.
But when the Rhode Island high school teacher requested April 3 off as one of...

European Union and NATO officials expressed undisguised relief on Friday at Scotland's clear vote against independence from Britain, but some fretted that the genie of separatism may be out of the bottle in Europe.
EU partners had mostly...

ROME - "SILENZIO!" says the sign just past the massive bronze doors marking the entrance to St. Mary and the Martyrs Catholic Church in Rome, one of the two or three most important churches in Christian history. The sign reminds all that this is...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - "Be sure to use the handrail," national park guide Ronnie van Nostrand said as he led a small tour group upstairs in the only home Abraham Lincoln ever owned. "It's the same railing Mr. Lincoln used."
We had all...

Alice Brown remembers the moment of dread when doctors diagnosed her with cancer. She imagines her terror and despair were much like what Jesus felt when he was sentenced to die on the cross. Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy seemed to defeat the...

A few days ago, Joan Lefkow was walking down a Chicago street flanked by federal marshals when a panhandler walked up to her and said, "God bless you, Judge Lefkow." It has been nine months since U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow's...